


The Creature Within

by thecluelessphilosopher



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow & Related Fandoms
Genre: Carry On Countdown 2019, M/M, Magical Creatures, Spirit Animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21584740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecluelessphilosopher/pseuds/thecluelessphilosopher
Summary: The gang has a run-in with the Humdrum that shows them new parts of themselves.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	The Creature Within

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr @the-clueless-philosopher.

**Magical Creatures:**

Baz POV - Whole Fic.

**November 20, 2015**

Dating Simon Snow is not the erotic gropefest of my fifth year fantasies, but it is wholly as eventful as I thought it would be. Him, being the thoughtful, terrible, boyfriend he is decided to take the whole gang out for a midnight picnic just outside the Wavering Woods. He even invited my aunt Fiona. Yeah, we got taken by the Humdrum.

I didn’t realize what was going on for a while. One minute we were sitting around by candlelight, laughing and talking, the next I felt an unmistakable emptiness in my stomach. The feeling, however, was gone as soon as it came, for soon, we were back in the Wavering Woods as we had been before, only something was different. Everything was under a mysterious blue hue, as if we had been submerged underwater.

Fiona pulled out her wand and started towards the entrance to the forest, ushering for us to follow. Gripping Simons hand, I followed her down a mysteriously lit path. The whole world seemed to be parallel to the one I’ve known, nothing is specifically different but it’s as if my center of gravity has shifted. I take a minute to look around at forest creatures which seem to be scuttling across the branches, circling us. I hear a girlish scream that could only belong to Agatha Wellbelove and Simon tightens his grip on my hand. Looking around, I spotted the face of an eleven year-old Simon Snow. My heart clenches with the memory of that lost, beautiful boy that made a young Baz feel things he was very afraid of. I’m snapped out of my reminiscent haze as I realize why a distant memory has suddenly manifested itself in front of me. The Humdrum. The first to speak is Fiona. 

“What the - who the - fucking hell”

“Its the Humdrum” Simon answer her stammers, with a fearful quiver in his voice.

“More magic?” The Humdrum asks.

“No no no no” Simon stammers, rocking back and forth. I pull him into my side. 

“Very well then” The Humdrum declares.

We all feel a very distinct shift as the blue shifts to purple and the trees join together. Blocking the path out of the forest. 

“Very well then” Fiona says as the trudges down the path. 

“Very well then” Bunce says, taking the lead. 

We walk down the path through the forest. The stars above us seem to create a dome, boxing us into the area. The path opens up into a clearing we are surrounded by very orthodox, generic trees that are eerily uniform. Dev walks forward, for some inexplicable reason. Then I see it, a towering form. A brown grizzly bear presents itself in the clearing. Devforward. 

“What the fuck, Grimm?” Fiona fruitlessly questions. 

The bear bends down to to meet his hand, its antlers becoming visible. Dev has a satisfied smile on his face, all of us watching the two of them in awe. The bear opens its mouth and whispers something inaudible to Dev as I watch the color drain from his face. Just when Dev looks like he’s about to cry, the bear dissolves into purple dust, leaving his hand hanging out in the air. 

“Dev?” Niall questions.   


Dev simply turns around and collapses into his best friend. We all stand there for a moment, unsure whether or not we should comfort our friend. He doesn’t seem to be crying, he’s just...deflated. Once he detaches himself from Niall. He enlightens us. 

“I...I think they’re like spirit animals”   
“Spirit animals?” Wellbelove questions, seemingly curios.

“Yeah...um...like dark spirit animals that prey on your fears”

“Morbid” Fiona says jauntily. “Let’s get the fuck out of this place!”

“This is interesting” Bunce thinks out loud as we walk. 

“If these animals, prey off of our weaknesses then they must be a corporeal part of our soul...” she starts as I turn towards Simon, who still has a death grip on my hand.

“Are you okay, Love?”

“Yeah...I um...I think the Humdrum is my so called spirit animal”

Well, shit. There’s nothing I can say to comfort him, so I wrap my arm around his waist and let him lean his head on my shoulder as we walk.

The next time one of these “spirit animals” appears, its for Fiona. We were walking through the forest, watching the sun rise and the purple shift to red. Not, light red like a romantic hue. More like the color of blood. Its suffocating, like the whole world exists in a realm between life and death. The light is still dark and ominous. Above us, there’s a bridge created by the branches of different trees growing over each other. Under different circumstances, it might be quite the beautiful canopy.

Fiona has usurped the lead from Bunce and has her teeth clenched so tightly, I can feel the tension in her jaw. We hear it before we see it. The sound of sparks broke the heavy silence. Above us, we see a sparkling orange ball, attached to the tail of a white fox. It flips in the air a few times before diving through the canopy, appearing to make itself smaller in order to squeeze through the layered branches. It lands, on a branch just ahead of Fiona’s eyes. The fox narrows its eyes to slits and leans down to whisper something to Fiona. I see her fists clench and her posture go from defensive to mutinous but her hard exterior can’t stop the tears from welling up in her eyes. When its speech is over the fox transforms into blue swirls of powder and streams upwards, reabsorbed into the dome of stars above us. 

“Fiona?” I say. 

“It told me I’m disappointing Tasha, and failing you, amongst other things, do what you will with it Bunce” She says nonchalantly, continuing on. 

Bunce writes down what Fiona says in a notebook none of us were aware she had.    
Dev decides to open up

“It told me that I’m a side character, in Baz’s story” he says, looking at his feet.

“I told you that” I say, kicking myself. 

“Yeah, when we were twelve”

An uncomfortable silence settles between the group, all of us standing around, unsure of what we should do, until Simon saves us. 

“So how about that airplane food?” Simon says sending us all into fits unwarranted laughter. 

After that, the tone stays relatively light given the circumstances. We idly chat about school with Fiona as the light shifts from dark red to a bright, but still somehow dark red. A while back, Bunce convinced Simon to give her a Piggyback ride, forcing our hands apart, but I keep a close watch on him. I don’t think his spirit animal is the Humdrum, but I don’t think Snow would be able to handle it if it was. Bunce conjures a whiteboard in the air above Simon’s head and she and Simon take the lead, so the rest of us can see what she’s writing. 

“Okay we really should sort this out” She states, rather matter-of-factly.

Bunce draws three columns ‘what we know’ and ‘what we think we know’ and ‘what we don’t know’. 

“Okay” starts Dev, ready to participate “We know that the animals prey off of fears and insecurities”

“Good”, Bunce says as she writes it down. 

She draws another arrow and writes ‘magical animals’ and ‘whispers to individual’

I decide to play along and contribute, “We don’t know why we’re here, where we are, or why the fuck the light keeps changing colors”

Bunce writes it down, swears and all. 

She pushes the board to the side and we continue on. 

A few meters down the path I spot a pitch black creature, with a hollowed out rib cage. Its two front legs are made of...lava that flows from its chest. 

“Well this one’s here for me I suppose, it can’t do worse than what I do to myself,” I say marching towards my adversary. I reach out, and the dog-like figure disappears, into thin air as if it had never been there at all. 

“Huh” Notes Fiona. 

“Baz’s spirit animal doesn’t like him” Bunce says as she writes it on the whiteboard and we continue on as if nothing had happened. 

The seven of us march down the path as the light shifts to a bright orange and the trees morph from tall trees of a forest too flatter, more sparse trees of some kind of grassland or savanna. Bunce has long given up a ride on Simon’s back and the group has returned to the comfortable silence we’ve spent most of our journey in. I couldn’t say how much time has passed, perhaps hours, more likely days. My feet have become numb to the pain of walking such lengths and I can see the droop in the shoulders of my comrades. The air is thick, it’s like trying to breath with an elephant on your chest. 

In the middle of the grass on which we’ve been walking, a lake opens up with crystal blue, perhaps even sparkling water. 

“Here we go again” Fiona sighs. 

The water starts forming up until the outline of a horse can clearly be seen. It stretches like clay and you can even see the stretch lines as if gel is constructing the creature before us. The form takes the shape of a horse with rainbow hair curling and twisting in every direction. Its breathtaking. Wellbelove steps forward, and makes her way into the lake, eliciting surprised gasps from the onlookers. Tears are already streaming down her face. The horse leans down resting, it's head on her shoulder and whispers something. Wellbelove nods and walks back towards the group. She silently watches the horse morph back into water and collapse into the lake. The lake closes up and returns to grass as the light shifts from orange to an ominous, golden-yellow. 

Having plodded through the savanna, we find ourselves in the most fairytale book land I’ve ever seen. We are surrounded by mystical waterfalls and strange looking plants, even I can’t help but be in awe of the place we’ve found ourselves in. The air isn’t thick, rather, thin, like there isn’t enough for all of us. No matter, I’d give my last breath to Simon bloody Snow. We reach a cave draped in leaves and vines. Niall automatically steps forward. He sweeps the vine aside and we see the eyes of some kind-of age old turtle. It moves its mouth and Niall simply hangs his head in sorrow. The turtle, pays no attention and launches itself into the air, soaring like a dragon with scaly wings. Niall takes the pen from bunce and writes under ‘what we think we know’, ‘animals want to take away an individual's will to keep going’

“Damn, Kelly” Fiona says, not realizing she said it out loud. 

Through the jungle trees, I spot another one I assume is for me. A black cat with an elongated nose sits, head hung under its own rain cloud, its chest is engraved with a gold pattern, and the Pitch family crest.

“I think you’re up, Baz” Niall says. 

I walk forward, but the creature runs away, into the jungle. 

I guess mine really doesn’t like me.

Bunce draws an arrow from my name and writes ‘takes more than one form’

As we trudge along the path, we come to a cliff. No bridge or anything , just a cliff. Fiona sits down and dangle her feet, the rest of us follow. The light switches from a bright yellow to a forest-green color. Simon leans his head on my shoulder and I wrap my arms around him. This past...however long it's been...has felt like a haze. Like the act of waiting but I don’t know what I’m waiting for.

Suddenly, a red...figure launches out of the water into the air. The leathery, light red color stands out against the green background. The front of the figure is a horse but the back has the tail of an eel or a fish. Its perhaps the most striking out of the creatures we’ve seen. Just like Penny. The face of the horse has some kind of crown or tiara dipping between the two eyes and planting a purple stone on the bridge of its nose. 

The creature dips and floats in front of Bunce as she reaches her hand out and strokes the stone with a dumbfounded look on her face. The creature’s gemstone glows as the ring on Bunce’s finger glows and she looks like she suddenly understands the secrets of the universe. Tears stream down her face. 

Before any of us can fully comprehend the events that had just taken place, a winged lion springs up from nowhere and scoops up the seven of us onto its back. Simon is holding onto its neck leaning forward. We travel as the light turns back into the blue it had been when we arrived. The lion is covered in adornments, like the vines of silver of gold winding around its tail and the earrings in its ears. The wind whistles in my ear and I can hear my friends laughing and shouting. It's the most carefree I’ve seen Simon in a while. The creature carries us over the water and lands in a cloud of purple dust. All of us dismount except for Simon, who appears to be in a heated conversation with the lion. Eventually, he dismounts but I can feel his magic in the air between us. I turn towards the cloud of purple. On a pedestal, lays a black horse with a mane and tail of purple dust streaming into the cloud. I’m pulled by the same force that the crucible pulled me to Simon with. I face the creature, with my hands shaking, afraid that it will leave. 

It whispers in a voice I can’t quite place.

“You can’t decide who you want to be, you are the villain playing hero” it starts “you’ve sacrificed everything, your family, your power” it spits the word power, the word striking me in the chest “for a boy that will never truly love you the way you love him” I let out a sob “You are trying to be everything, Basilton Pitch, in the process you have become nothing”. Uncontrollable tears stream down my face, though I’m not sure why all of this is I have said to myself before. Then I realize, it’s my mother’s voice. I collapse on the ground, Simon collapsing next to me catching my tears on his shoulder. 

I feel another pull and the sky is black again. 

“Welcome back,” says the Humdrum. 


End file.
